With her post on the Lipstick Chronicles yesterday, Laurie Moore got me thinking about my dearest friend.

     A long time ago, when I was in Jr. High I went with my mother, grandmother, and sisters to get a cat.  We hadn’t had one for quite a while.  Dad had always griped about our cats and after the last one, well…we hadn’t replaced old Butch yet.  We’d moved several times and had a few dogs but no cats that stayed around for long. 

     So there we were just settling in to a new home when my mother spied a mouse running across the room.  My father grumbled under his breath, “I guess we’ll have to get a cat.”  We all heard it.  The next day found us in a woman’s living room looking at her Siamese kittens—she had two left.  One was a blue point male and the other was a seal point female.  The male looked us over and wandered off.  The female snuggled into my sister’s lap and purred.  Can you guess which one we brought home?

     Once she got to our house, she spent the rest of the day and half the night snooping into every nook and cranny.  She earned her name, Snoopy.  Finally exhausted, she climbed into my bed and slept with me.  From that day until twenty one years later, she and I were inseparable.  Where I went so did she.  She would ride in my bicycle basket to the stables, spend the day there, and ride back home with me in the evening.  She would always come when I whistled for her from wherever she had wandered.

     We used to laugh at my father when, after all the cats we had over the years, we caught him petting her and talking baby talk to her.  When I got married, she came with me.  She melted my Dear Hubby’s cat hating heart and that of his father’s too.  She ruled over and outlived 3 dogs.  When she left us in her twenty-first year, our hearts broke.